Spain’s 2026 Wildfire Season: The Numbers, Province by Province
Almost 190,000 hectares, 38 major fires, the largest single fire ever recorded in Spain — and more than 90,000 people moved out of their homes. Here is what burned, where, who fought it, and exactly who pays when the flames reach a house.
This has been the hardest fire summer Spain has seen in years. By the start of August the Ministry for the Ecological Transition counted 186,480 hectares burned in 2026 — more than five times the 33,360 hectares lost by the same point in 2025 — across 38 major fires and more than four thousand separate incidents. Fifteen people have died. Below are the figures province by province, the extraordinary machine that was thrown at the flames, and the part of the story that gets far less coverage than it deserves: what your insurance actually does when fire arrives at your gate.
The short version
- 186,480 hectares burned to 1 August on the ministry’s ground-surveyed count; the EFFIS satellite system puts the provisional figure above 220,000.
- 38 major fires (over 500 hectares) by 1 August, against 12 at the same point last year. Total incidents to 28 July: 4,287.
- The Ávila–Madrid–Toledo fire passed 77,000 hectares — the largest single wildfire recorded in Spain — and triggered the first ever national-interest emergency declared for a fire.
- Fifteen deaths, fourteen of them at Los Gallardos in Almería, and more than 90,000 people evacuated or confined.
- A wildfire is an ordinary risk in Spanish insurance law. Your own insurer pays — not the Consorcio — and only if you hold the cover.
- The government has declared 211 zones gravely affected by a civil-protection emergency across fourteen regions. Those grants are capped and reduced by any insurance payout.
The 2026 season in numbers
Two different official numbers are circulating this summer and both are correct. The Ministry for the Ecological Transition (MITECO) publishes the Estadística General de Incendios Forestales, a ground-surveyed count compiled from the reports each regional fire service files. That figure stood at 173,651 hectares to 28 July, about 180,000 by the thirtieth, and 186,480 by 1 August.
The European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) works the other way round, drawing burned-area perimeters from satellite imagery in near real time. Its provisional estimate for Spain has passed 220,000 hectares. Satellites map the outer edge of a burn including unburnt islands inside it, and they capture fires still moving; ground surveys arrive later and are more precise. Expect the two to converge downward as the season is audited.
| Measure | 2026 to date | Same point in 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Burned area (MITECO, ground count) | 186,480 ha to 1 August | 33,360 ha |
| Burned area (EFFIS, satellite) | Over 220,000 ha, provisional | — |
| Major fires over 500 ha | 38 by 1 August | 12 |
| Total incidents | 4,287 to 28 July | — |
| Deaths | 15 | — |
| Evacuated or confined | Over 90,000 | — |
For context, only 2022 and 2025 have burned more by this stage of the year in the past decade. The driver was meteorological: a run of European heatwaves through June and July left fuel moisture at record lows, and several of the big fires ran at night, which is the behaviour firefighters most dread because it removes the window in which ground crews normally regain a perimeter.
Where it burned, province by province
Spain does not publish a live hectares-by-province table, so the honest way to answer “which provinces burned” is to list the major fires and the province each one sat in. These are the confirmed large fires of the 2026 season, with the figures reported by the regional authorities and the ministry.
| Province | Fire | Area | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ávila (Castilla y León) | Burgohondo / Sierra Oeste, from 22 July | Over 50,000 ha | The largest fire ever documented in the province |
| Madrid | #IFSierraOeste, from 24 July | About 27,000 ha | Three fires merged; national emergency declared |
| Guadalajara (Castilla-La Mancha) | La Mierla, from 16 July | 32,000–35,000 ha | Sierra Norte de Guadalajara Natural Park |
| Guadalajara | Selas, 21–26 July | 2,800–3,000 ha | Started by a roadside vehicle fire |
| Cantabria | Winter and spring fires from 25 February | About 15,500 ha | Highest provincial total in Spain in early July |
| Zaragoza (Aragón) | Cinco Villas | Over 12,000 ha | Numerous village evacuations |
| Castellón (Comunitat Valenciana) | La Vall d’Uixó, from 25 July | 9,568 ha | 82 km perimeter; 12% of the Sierra de Espadán park burned |
| Almería (Andalucía) | Los Gallardos, 9–24 July | About 5,200 ha | 14 deaths — the deadliest fire recorded in Andalucía |
| Toledo (Castilla-La Mancha) | Southern flank of the Sierra Oeste complex | Included in the 77,000 ha total | Covered by the national emergency declaration |
| León (Castilla y León) | San Cipriano del Condado; Valdelaloba | Still at level 2 in late July | Among the last fires still active |
| Zamora (Castilla y León) | Fermoselle | Crews from four provinces plus Serbia | Over thirty ground brigades and nine aircraft |
Beyond those, the season reached almost every corner of the country. Fires of note were recorded in Huesca, Huelva, Córdoba, Cáceres, Badajoz, Girona on the Costa Brava, Pontevedra, Asturias and even Álava, which is not normally a fire province at all. The pattern this year was unusual: the worst damage fell on the interior of the peninsula rather than the traditional hotspots of Galicia and the north-west.
The fire that broke the record
The defining event of the summer began on 22 July at Burgohondo, in the Sierra de Gredos foothills of Ávila. Within two days it had crossed into the Community of Madrid, merged with two other fires and become a single front designated #IFSierraOeste. In the early hours of 24 July the government declared an emergencia de interés nacional covering Madrid, Ávila and Toledo — the first time that mechanism had ever been triggered by a wildfire.
At its peak the fire exceeded 77,000 hectares, making it the largest single wildfire on Spanish record. Around 27,000 of those hectares lay inside the Community of Madrid. Among the infrastructure threatened was NASA’s Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex at Robledo de Chavela. It was declared stabilised on 30 July, when command passed back to the regional authorities and the emergency was stepped down to operational level 2.
The human logistics were on a scale rarely seen outside a natural disaster. In Madrid alone, 3,000 people were housed in 24 reception centres, another 1,600 vulnerable residents were tracked individually at home or at displacement points, and seven urbanisations remained evacuated after the fire was stabilised. Regional health services logged more than 2,900 medical interventions, deployed 380 professionals and 150 vehicles, and distributed 50,000 FFP2 masks. The transport authority moved 125 buses and 175 km of closed roads were reopened.
Who fought it: the units and the aircraft
Firefighting in Spain is primarily a regional responsibility, with each autonomous community running its own service — INFOCA in Andalucía, the Generalitat’s brigades in the Comunitat Valenciana, and so on. On top of that sits a state apparatus that regions can call in, coordinated by the Interior Ministry through the CECOD committee, which also brings in the Guardia Civil, the National Police, the DGT, Civil Protection, Defence and the state meteorological agency AEMET.
| Unit | What it is | 2026 strength |
|---|---|---|
| BRIF | Ministry helicopter-borne reinforcement brigades, deployed anywhere in Spain | 10 brigades: nine BRIF-A of about 60 people and two helicopters each, plus one BRIF-B of about 30 and one helicopter |
| MITECO air fleet | The state’s own aerial firefighting assets | 56 aircraft — 31 helicopters and 25 large aeroplanes and water bombers |
| 43 Grupo, Ejercito del Aire | Air Force unit that flies the ministry’s Canadair amphibians | Crews the large-capacity water-bomber fleet |
| UME | The Military Emergencies Unit, the army’s disaster-response arm | 5 intervention battalions, 32 ground firefighting modules, a signals battalion and a support regiment |
| All administrations | Regional, state and contracted aircraft combined | About 280 aircraft nationally |
On the Sierra Oeste fire the numbers give a sense of the scale. On 25 July the UME alone had 1,201 personnel and 405 ground vehicles committed. The full central-government deployment on that one fire reached 2,737 people, 426 ground assets and 21 aircraft, working alongside regional brigades and 3,500 Civil Protection volunteers coordinated by the Madrid region. The UME’s deputy commander described the complexity as “tremendous”, which from that organisation is saying something.
At La Vall d’Uixó the pattern was similar in miniature: a large aerial deployment during the run, tapering to 17 aircraft working thermal-camera hotspots once the perimeter held, while 2,800 residents of Artana and Eslida stayed out of their homes days after the rest had returned. Government spending on fire suppression rose 34% between 2024 and 2026, and the BRIF budget alone is up 47%.
When Spain called Europe
In July Spain activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, the pooled arrangement under which member states lend each other emergency capability. The response brought six firefighting aircraft from Greece, Italy and Türkiye, plus 134 firefighters and 41 vehicles from Portugal. Serbian crews worked the Fermoselle fire in Zamora alongside brigades from Zamora, Salamanca, Cádiz and Cantabria. The Copernicus programme provided emergency satellite mapping throughout.
The mechanism was unusually busy this summer because France activated it too. For the 2026 season the EU had pre-positioned its largest ever wildfire response: the rescEU fleet of 22 firefighting aeroplanes and five helicopters across twelve countries, backed by 777 firefighters stationed in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. Even that was stretched. It is a reasonable bet that the fleet grows again before 2027.
Who pays when fire reaches your house
This is where a great deal of well-meant misinformation circulates every August, so it is worth being precise. In Spanish insurance law a forest fire is an ordinary risk. That means the damage is paid by your own insurance company under your policy — not by the state, and not by the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros.
The Consorcio covers a closed list of extraordinary risks: extraordinary flooding, earthquake and seaquake, volcanic eruption, atypical cyclonic storm, the fall of celestial bodies, terrorism, riot and civil commotion, and the actions of the armed forces in peacetime. Wildfire is not on that list, and it does not join the list because the fire was enormous, because a national emergency was declared, or because your municipality was named a disaster zone. Our guide to the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros explains the full mechanism.
The practical consequence is blunt. A house with a live multirisk policy is rebuilt by its insurer. A house without one is rebuilt by its owner. That is precisely why fire is the founding cover of every home policy we write — it sits at the core of home insurance in Spain, and of the home, car, health and travel insurance we arrange for English speakers across Spain.
State aid exists but it is a safety net, not a substitute. On 28 July 2026 the Council of Ministers declared 211 zones gravely affected by a civil-protection emergency across fourteen autonomous communities, covering events between 31 March and 27 July. The package includes direct grants, up to 50% funding for councils repairing infrastructure, tax relief and an extraordinary labour benefit of up to four months requiring no minimum contribution history. These grants are capped, and any insurance indemnity you receive is deducted from them.
What a Spanish home policy actually pays for
A Spanish multirriesgo del hogar is broader than most new arrivals expect. Fire is the anchor cover, but the surrounding heads are where a wildfire claim is actually settled, because in most cases the house is smoke-damaged and water-damaged rather than destroyed.
- Fire, explosion and lightning — the core cover, for both buildings (continente) and contents (contenido).
- Smoke damage — frequently the largest element of the bill. Soot penetrates soft furnishings, kitchens and air-conditioning systems long after the flames have passed the property.
- Firefighting costs and salvage — the damage done by the extinction effort itself, including water and forced entry, and the cost of protecting what survived.
- Debris removal and demolition — clearing a burnt structure before rebuilding, which on a hillside plot can be a serious sum in its own right.
- Temporary accommodation — somewhere to live while the house is uninhabitable, usually for a defined period.
- Replacement of documents — reissuing passports, residency cards, deeds and vehicle papers.
- Family civil liability — if a fire starts on your land and spreads to a neighbour’s. On the Generali home policies we place this runs to €300,000 as standard and can be extended to €1,000,000.
Worth knowing what a home policy is not. It insures the dwelling, its contents and normally the garden, pool and boundary features under the buildings section — but it is not designed to insure standing woodland or a commercial crop, which belong to the agricultural insurance pool. If you own acreage as well as a house, that is a separate conversation. Our expat guide to home insurance in Spain goes through the schedule line by line.
Cars, businesses and holiday lets
Cars. Whether your vehicle is covered for fire depends entirely on the tier you bought. Basic terceros — pure third-party liability — pays nothing for your own burnt car. Terceros ampliado adds fire, theft and glass, and todo riesgo covers it in full. This is the single most common gap we see after a fire, because the cheapest online motor policy is almost always stripped back to bare terceros. Our comparison of terceros versus todo riesgo sets out where the dividing line falls, and the tiers are explained on the car insurance in Spain page.
Businesses. Commercial, shop and office policies cover fire damage to premises and stock, including the secondary effects — smoke, vapour, dust and soot — plus firefighting costs and post-fire cleaning. The cover that matters most after a wildfire is usually optional: business interruption, which replaces lost trading income while you are closed, and temporary premises cover. A bar or shop in an evacuated village can lose a fortnight of August takings without a single scorched wall. See public liability insurance in Spain for how the liability side fits together.
Holiday homes and rentals. Two points catch people out. First, an unoccupied property has vacancy conditions in the schedule, and a house that sits empty for months needs to be declared as a holiday home rather than a permanent residence. Second, if you let the property, loss of rent is usually an option rather than a default. Owners letting to tourists should read our page on tourist rental insurance; long-term landlords should look at overseas landlord insurance.
The clearance duty most villa owners miss
If your house sits in or near forest land — which describes a very large share of the villas and urbanisations along the Costa Blanca — you probably have a legal duty to keep vegetation cleared, and a surprising number of owners have never been told.
The state framework is the Ley 43/2003 de Montes, which requires passive protection measures on forest land and its zone of influence. The detail is regional. Catalonia’s Ley 5/2003 is the best-known example, obliging urbanisations that are not contiguous with the urban fabric to maintain a perimeter protection strip at least 25 metres wide and to adopt a self-protection plan. Extremadura has comparable rules, and widths elsewhere typically run between 5 and 50 metres depending on the hazard rating.
In the Comunitat Valenciana all forest land is formally classified as high fire risk, and municipalities must hold a Plan de Actuación Municipal under the regional forest fire plan, with urbanisation self-protection plans annexed to it. Because so much of the duty lands at municipal level, the only reliable answer for your own plot comes from your ayuntamiento. Ask specifically about the required strip width and the deadline each year — most run to early summer.
If it happens to you: the claim, step by step
Evacuation orders come with very little notice, and the first hour afterwards is not the moment to be working out how a Spanish claim runs. The sequence below is worth knowing in advance.
- Safety first, and do not go back. Follow the evacuation instruction, take documents and medication, and call 112 for anything urgent — our guide to emergency numbers in Spain lists the rest.
- Notify the insurer within seven days. Article 16 of the Insurance Contract Act (Ley 50/1980) sets a seven-day window from the moment you become aware of the loss, unless your policy allows longer. Notify by any means that leaves a record, and do it even if you cannot yet see the damage.
- Photograph everything before you clear anything. Wide shots of each room and close-ups of significant items. Smoke damage is easy to under-record and hard to prove later.
- Keep every receipt from the moment you leave. Hotel bills, meals and emergency purchases often fall under temporary accommodation and additional expenses.
- Take the emergency steps a reasonable owner would. Boarding up, tarpaulins and making the structure safe are your duty to mitigate, and the reasonable cost is recoverable.
- The loss adjuster visits. If you disagree with the perito, Article 38 gives you a formal route: you appoint your own expert and, if the two cannot agree, a third is appointed jointly to settle it.
- Know the payment deadlines. Under Article 18 the insurer must pay the minimum sum it clearly owes within 40 days of notification, and Article 20 imposes penalty interest for unjustified delay.
Ask for the informe from the fire service or Guardia Civil confirming the cause and date if one exists, and register with your town hall if a zone declaration applies, since council grants are administered separately from the insurance claim. Our page on making an insurance claim in Spain covers the general process across all classes of policy.
Not sure your home is properly covered for fire?
Send us your current policy schedule and we will read it in English and tell you honestly what it does on a bad day — whether the buildings sum insured still matches what it would cost to rebuild, whether smoke, debris removal and temporary accommodation are actually in there, and whether your car sits on a tier that would pay for itself. No obligation, and no charge.
Get a free review → Home insurance in SpainFrequently asked questions
Yes. Fire is the founding cover of every Spanish multirisk home policy, and a forest fire that reaches your property is an ordinary insured fire like any other. The policy will normally also pay for smoke damage, the cost of the extinction effort, debris removal and demolition, temporary accommodation while the house is uninhabitable and the replacement of destroyed documents. What it will not do is stretch beyond the sums insured on your schedule, which is why the buildings figure should reflect the current cost of rebuilding.
No, with one narrow exception. The Consorcio covers a closed list of extraordinary risks — extraordinary flooding, earthquake, seaquake, volcanic eruption, atypical cyclonic storm, falling celestial bodies, terrorism, riot and armed forces action in peacetime. A wildfire is an ordinary risk and stays with your own insurer no matter how large the fire is or whether an emergency was declared. The exception is that the Consorcio does compensate death or personal injury suffered by people who voluntarily help to fight the fire.
The Ministry for the Ecological Transition counted 186,480 hectares burned by 1 August 2026, more than five times the 33,360 hectares lost by the same date in 2025. The EFFIS satellite system puts its provisional estimate above 220,000 hectares; satellite perimeters run higher than ground surveys because they include unburnt patches inside a fire’s outer edge. There were 38 fires above 500 hectares by 1 August, against 12 at the same point last year, and 4,287 incidents in total to 28 July.
Ávila took the heaviest loss, with more than 50,000 hectares in the largest fire ever documented in that province, followed by Guadalajara at 32,000 to 35,000 hectares at La Mierla and around 27,000 hectares in the Community of Madrid. Cantabria had accumulated about 15,500 hectares by early July, Zaragoza lost over 12,000 in the Cinco Villas, Castellón 9,568 at La Vall d’Uixó and Almería about 5,200 at Los Gallardos. Toledo, León, Zamora, Huesca, Huelva and Girona also recorded significant fires.
Only if you hold the right tier. Basic terceros is third-party liability alone and pays nothing towards your own vehicle. Terceros ampliado adds fire, theft and glass, and todo riesgo covers fire in full, with or without an excess depending on the policy. This is the most common gap we see after a fire, because stripped-back online motor policies are usually pure terceros. If your car lives outside at a rural or hillside property, the step up to terceros ampliado is normally the cheapest protection you can buy.
Very probably, if the property sits in or near forest land. The national Ley 43/2003 de Montes requires passive protection measures, and the detailed duty is set regionally and enforced municipally. Catalonia requires a perimeter strip of at least 25 metres around urbanisations that are not contiguous with the urban fabric, plus a self-protection plan, and other regions set widths between roughly 5 and 50 metres by hazard rating. Ask your ayuntamiento for the exact width and annual deadline that applies to your plot.
Article 16 of Ley 50/1980 gives you seven days from becoming aware of the loss to notify your insurer, unless your policy sets a longer period. Notify by a method that leaves a record and do not wait until you can assess the damage. From your side, the insurer must pay the minimum amount it clearly owes within 40 days of that notification under Article 18, and Article 20 adds penalty interest if it delays without justification. If you dispute the loss adjuster’s figure, Article 38 provides a three-expert procedure.
On 28 July 2026 the Council of Ministers declared 211 zones gravely affected by a civil-protection emergency across fourteen autonomous communities, covering events from 31 March to 27 July. The package includes direct grants to those affected, up to 50% funding for councils repairing infrastructure, tax relief and an extraordinary labour benefit of up to four months that requires no minimum contribution record. The grants are capped and any insurance indemnity is deducted from them, so they supplement a policy rather than replace one.
Sources & references: MITECO — Avances informativos and the Estadística General de Incendios Forestales (burned area, incident and large-fire counts); EFFIS / Copernicus (satellite burned-area estimates); Comunidad de Madrid (official #IFSierraOeste figures); Ministerio del Interior (CECOD, state campaign, the 211-zone declaration); Unidad Militar de Emergencias; EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (rescEU and Mechanism deployments); Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros (extraordinary-risk scope); Ley 50/1980 (Insurance Contract Act, arts. 16, 18, 20, 30, 38); Ley 43/2003 de Montes; Ley 5/2003 (Catalan urbanisation clearance rules).
Fire statistics are provisional and were compiled in early August 2026; ground-surveyed totals are routinely revised as the season is audited. Policy features described are typical of the Spanish market and of the Generali contracts we place, but cover, limits and exclusions are set by your own policy schedule and conditions. This guide is general information, not legal or financial advice.